Arch Linux

clidx

Member

Registered: 2015-04-26

Posts: 21

Issues upgrading kernel, partition not found

Hello, I'm having trouble upgrading from 3.19-2-1 to 3.19-3-3. Please bear with me, I am fairly new to linux.

My partition setup is two btrfs partitions for / and /home, both under dm-crypt. I have a UEFI computer with secure boot off and I'm running reFINd as my boot manager - on a separate EFI partition.

I ugpraded via pacman but couldn't mount the EFI partition to copy the new ramdisk images from /boot.  The error was that vfat is an unknown filesystem.. so I downgraded, mounted the EFI partition, upgraded, copied the ramdisk images over and rebooted.

Now after booting, the encrypt hook fails to find my disk. It is set to search by UUID. The UUID that it tries to search for is the correct one - I double checked the UUID using 'ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid', also double checked my kernel parameters in reFINd, the config in mkinitcpio.conf and tried manually pointing to the config file when building the image.

I ended up downgrading the kernel, copying the ramdisks back over and here I am.

The issue seems to me that some module to detect the partitions isn't loading as it won't even find the UUID right from the top, but where do I go from here?

Here's the complete error message (under [encrypt])

Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-uuid/theuuid of the encrypted partition ...
ERROR: Unable to find root device  '/dev/disk/by-uuid/theuuid'

Then the btrfs hook doesn't work because the partition didn't map.

Last edited by clidx (2015-04-26 19:21:01)

EscapedNull

Member

Registered: 2013-12-04

Posts: 129

Re: Issues upgrading kernel, partition not found

Add this kernel parameter to get an early userspace recovery shell:

break=premount

Then run

dmesg

and look for anything relevant. Use Shift+PgUp/PgDn to scroll.

Also double check that /lib/modules/3.19.3-3-ARCH/ exists and contains the necessary modules, in case of the off chance that something went wrong during the upgrade and the new modules weren't installed. Use

pacman -Qkk linux

to check, and

pacman -S linux

to reinstall if necessary (or just to be sure).

clidx

Member

Registered: 2015-04-26

Posts: 21

Re: Issues upgrading kernel, partition not found

The issue persists when trying to upgrade to 4.0.1

pacman -Qkk linux

warning: linux: /usr/lib/modules/4.0.1-1-ARCH/modules.alias (Modification time mismatch)
warning: linux: /usr/lib/modules/4.0.1-1-ARCH/modules.alias.bin (Modification time mismatch)
warning: linux: /usr/lib/modules/4.0.1-1-ARCH/modules.builtin.bin (Modification time mismatch)
warning: linux: /usr/lib/modules/4.0.1-1-ARCH/modules.dep (Modification time mismatch)
warning: linux: /usr/lib/modules/4.0.1-1-ARCH/modules.dep.bin (Modification time mismatch)
warning: linux: /usr/lib/modules/4.0.1-1-ARCH/modules.devname (Modification time mismatch)
warning: linux: /usr/lib/modules/4.0.1-1-ARCH/modules.softdep (Modification time mismatch)
warning: linux: /usr/lib/modules/4.0.1-1-ARCH/modules.symbols (Modification time mismatch)
warning: linux: /usr/lib/modules/4.0.1-1-ARCH/modules.symbols.bin (Modification time mismatch)
linux: 4277 total files, 9 altered files

I'll reboot now and post up the dmesg in a bit.

So I'm getting some strange errors. I added the premount parameter to refind and it broke to shell. However I noticed an error that said the module /lib/modules/3.19.2-1-arch/modules.devname could not be found. My keyboard wouldn't work to dmesg so I booted via live usb and tried to rebuild ramdisk with the keyboard hook in chroot but I got an error saying mkinitcpio couldn't find modules modules in that same dir. Also uname -r in chroot still thinks I'm on 3.19 (not sure if it's meant to represent the kernel of the live system though).
So I think it's looking in the wrong directory for modules - also explains why I couldn't mount my efi partition as the vfat module couldn't load. What can I do?

depmod -a in chroot also tries to open the old module directory which doesn't exist anymore

I rebuilt the ramdisk with the keyboard hook but my keyboard still doesn't work. Strangely I can't actually see the keyboard hook being run (before encrypt, fails at encrypt).

Last edited by clidx (2015-05-09 12:34:08)

Spider.007

Member

Registered: 2004-06-20

Posts: 1,176

Re: Issues upgrading kernel, partition not found

It looks like an outdated/incorrect initramfs; if you upgrade the kernel but not the initramfs that will contain references to the incorrect version of modules, leading to issues such as these. This is a bit weird though:

I ugpraded via pacman but couldn't mount the EFI partition to copy the new ramdisk images from /boot.  The error was that vfat is an unknown filesystem

You did this while running 3.19-2 right, how come pacman couldn't mount the vfat partition when everything should have been working fine? Also, my EFI installs mount the efi-partition to /boot/efi, NOT /boot itself? This might suggest your rootfs contains your actual /boot. Could you show an ls -l from /boot on your rootfs and what is on the EFI partition? Do you really mount the vfat partition to /boot?

clidx

Member

Registered: 2015-04-26

Posts: 21

Re: Issues upgrading kernel, partition not found

... I forgot to copy the updated vmlinuz-linux from /boot to the rEFInd directory! D'oh!

I have a 99MB EFI partition (my laptop complains and creates it if it can't find it) so I have separate partitions for /boot and /boot/efi. If you're still interested here's my ls -l

drwxr-xr-x 3 root root     1024 Jan  1  1970 efi (different partition)
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20239454 May  9 13:28 initramfs-linux-fallback.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18059220 Apr  3 00:16 initramfs-linux-fallback.img.bak
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  7299256 May  9 13:28 initramfs-linux.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3522989 Apr  3 00:16 initramfs-linux.img.bak
drwx------ 2 root root    12288 Apr  3 00:12 lost+found
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4156768 Apr 29 11:01 vmlinuz-linux

Also

laptop% ls /boot/efi
BOOTSECT.BAK  EFI
laptop% ls /boot/efi/EFI
arch  Boot  Microsoft  refind

I still don't get why it couldn't load vfat. I tried to mount it while on 4.0.1-1 after upgrading but before rebooting. Maybe it was just being funny since I hadn't rebooted but it works fine now.

Last edited by clidx (2015-05-09 13:05:21)